Jonathan Mayer

Jonathan Mayer is a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at Stanford University, where he received his J.D. in 2013. He was named one of the Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2014, for his work on technology security and privacy. Jonathan's research and commentary frequently appears in national publications, and he has contributed to federal and state law enforcement actions.

Our recent research on Google’s circumvention of the Safari cookie blocking feature has led to some confusion, in part owing to the company’s statement in response (reproduced in its entiretybelow). This post is an attempt to elucidate the central issues. As with the original writeup, I aim for a neutral viewpoint in the interest of establishing a common factual understanding.

Yesterday the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) announced a supplementary set of self-regulatory principles for third parties on the web (pdf, press release). This post is a brief — and far from comprehensive — overview of improvements, continued deficiencies, and procedural issues.

Snooping on the Internet is tricky. The network is diffuse, global, and packed with potential targets. There’s no central system for identifying or locating individuals, so it’s hard to keep track of who is online and what they’re up to. What’s a spy agency to do?

"The Federal Communications Commission has hired Jonathan Mayer, a rising star in privacy circles, to serve as its technical lead for investigations into telephone, television and Internet service providers.

He will work primarily on consumer protection issues, especially those having to do with security and privacy, agency spokeswoman Shannon Gilson confirmed.

"“There is a common misconception that websites that have privacy policies are subject to rigorous federal protections when, generally, that is the opposite of what the privacy policy says,” said Jonathan Mayer, a privacy researcher and Stanford University computer science Ph.D. candidate.

The third edition of the Privacy Identity Innovation conference will be held in downtown Seattle this Spring. Taking place May 15-16 at the Bell Harbor International Conference Center, pii2012 Seattle will explore how to protect sensitive information while enabling new technologies and business models.

Jonathan Mayer is a computer science Ph.D. student and 3L at Stanford University. He graduated from Princeton University in 2009 with a concentration in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Jonathan's area of study encompasses the intersections of policy, law, and computer science - with particular emphasis on national security and international relations.

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In this first episode, Mike and I explore how your simplest digital footprints – fragments of Google searches, Facebook likes, and innocuous tweets – can expose deeply intimate facts about you. Like whether your parents are divorced and whether you own a gun. In fact, these vanilla datasets that we all generate every time we use the Internet reveal surprising clues about our personalities and behavior. So how can that information be used, and who is collecting it? We talk to Michal Kosinski of Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, and Jonathan Mayer, a computer scientist and lawyer.

As consumers increasingly adopt encryption tools, government officials have warned of the “Going Dark” problem – the notion that widespread encryption will thwart legitimate government efforts to investigate crime and safeguard national security. To address this problem, law enforcement and intelligence community officials have suggested that companies include “backdoors” in their products to permit lawful government access to encrypted data. This proposal has been met with criticism from technologists and privacy advocates alike.

"WELNA: It could indeed. Hackers, by definition, are trying to break into other people's computer accounts and steal their information, so monitoring their activity means watching them poach on other people's Internet usage and private data. I talked with Jonathan Mayer, a computer security fellow at Stanford who's reviewed these latest Snowden documents. He says because of the way the surveillance law is written, the NSA can actually hang on to that hacked information.

"Now Neustar might lose the contract to Ericsson, which is based in Sweden. Neustar says this would be bad for national security, said Jonathan Mayer, a fellow at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation.

“It certainly is a legitimate concern that the company that routes calls is in position to know a fair amount about law enforcement and intelligence investigations,” Mayer said."